So here we go with James Bond meets Doctor Who again. Only this time we have a proper Bond style villain… With an exceptionally stupid henchman.
The story is pretty basic. The travellers land on earth, find some dodgy goings-on, investigate and bish, bash, bosh they’ve found a plot to invade earth, which they promptly foil. A pretty basic invasion story (hence the name, I guess) with all the standard ingredients.
It is one of those stories with the typical megalomaniacal goit who thinks he can use the might of an alien race and then betray them keeping all the glory for himself. Forgetting, of course, that he is one man (and a pillock of a man at that) and they are a legion of scary robots.
We get to meet the world’s politest copper: “What the heck?” he declares whilst facing a Cyberman. Speaking strictly as a professional I can assure you the language would be a lot more choice and a lot less PG than that…
The imagery, however, is fantastic. A Cyberman driven insane by emotion is a pretty creepy sight.
And any doubts you may have about this story are utterly dispelled at the end of episode 6… There are no words to describe it. The sewer lid popping up, the Cybermen flooding the streets of London and, of course, wandering about with the backdrop of St Paul’s Cathedral. Brilliant stuff.
The attack against the Cyber fleet does seem a little too easy, however. It transpires that a Cyberfleet can be brought down by 1970s human technology…
Some of the scripting has its wobbly moments. Yes, the Brigadier genuinely does refer to Jamie and Zoe as those “Crazy kids”… And yes, there is a mention of a “Dolly soldier” at one point but I understand everyone spoke like that in the 70’s…
Eight episodes is a fair old chunk but this somehow feels like two stories wedged together – in a good way. The first 4 episodes are gradual build up with a Bond-esque villain and some unknown entities and then from episode 5 onwards we get Cybermen lumbering around the place. And for such a long story, the pacing works really well and the tension in many scenes is palpable.
The cast is fantastic as well. We have The Brigadier back and we meet Corporal (later Sergeant) Benton. It’s great to see UNIT in full flow and really feels like a sign of things to come.
Very enjoyable story let down a little by the rather simple ending – 8/10